EXCEED THE SPACE PROVIDED. The multi-departmental and multi-categorical General Clinical Research Center at The New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center serves as the focal point for programs in clinical investigation and clinical research training. This proposal requests five years of continued support for the Adult Unit of the Center, where clinical investigators can pursue studies to increase their understanding of normal function and disease mechanisms in humans in an optimal research setting. The Center provides a discrete in-patient research unit, and outpatient unit for adult ambulatory research subjects, biostatistical consulting, informatics, and nutrition research personnel working in a discrete metabolic kitchen. The adult core laboratory provides non-routine, quality-controlled analyses including mass spectrometry, substrate measurements and hormone assaysfor a diverse number of investigators and projects. The molecular core laboratory currently offers the following techniques: Oligonucleotide design and synthesis, DMAsequencing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methodologies, plasmid preparation and DNA isolation and purification. In addition to serving the research faculty of Weill/Cornell, the Center is also available to clinical investigators at affiliated hospitals, as an in-patient and ambulatory research resource within a high technology, tertiary-care general hospital. Current and projected projects include studies in the areas of AIDS/HIV, Allergy and Immunology, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Ophthalmology, Cardiology, Hypertension, Endocrinology and Diabetes, Gene Therapy, Pulmonary Diseases, Hematology and Oncology, Lupus and Autoimmune Disease, Nephrology, Neurology, Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Nutrition Research, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pathology, Aging, Ethics, Public Health, Radiology, Surgery, Urological Oncology, and Urology. Diseases under study utilizing the GCRC resource are complex and often multi-disciplinary in scope, and of considerable biological, medical, and/or public health significance.